Disconnecting From The Twitter Hive

30 May 2007

I know many of us are overly concerned with Twitter and it’s lack of reliability. Some, such as Ken Camp, have expressed concerns about that and are thinking of leaving. His latest post, dives into all of the various touch points many of us have. He then goes on to say that when he decides to leave Twitter or something else like it, “you’ll only notice by my absence there, which means you may not even notice.”

What pushed it over the edge for me, I think, was unrelated to the reliability issues. It’s a matter of what Twitter has become. Or maybe what it’s been for a while, and I’m now finally reaching a point where I’ve had enough of it. Twitter has turned into the 24×7 IRC channel. Over a decade ago, I was part of an IRC channel on one of the IRC networks. I made some friends, some of whom I am still in contact with, and even met my wife in that very channel. After a while, the channel simply ran it’s course. People moved on with their lives. IRC was replaced with other distractions.

I can’t handle the constant conversation anymore. It’s the very reason I rarely, if ever, log into Adium anymore–too much conversation! If I check in on Twitter, it will probably be from Facebook or with the occasional SMS. I won’t be camping out on Twitter anymore. Twitterrific is now turned off. Direct SMS is on if you want my attention, but I’m not going to be watching. At least not with any regularity.Twitter has been like crack–I have to check and see what people said overnight! While it’s been a while, I have to believe IRC was like that for a time as well. It’s probably a good sign that it’s time to dial back my usage, if not stop entirely. So that’s what I’m going to do, at least for now.